In cooperation with Siemens Corporate Technology (SCT) US, the Chair for Operating Systems (TUM IN F13) is offering a thesis topic (BA/MA/IDP) in the area of future industrial automation (industry 4.0). The practical part of the thesis will be done as part of a paid internship (6 months) on site at SCT in Princeton, NJ, USA.

Area of research:

Cyber-physical production systems (CPPS) build a network of industrial automation components and systems that provide the base for future industry 4.0 applications. As failures or vulnerabilities in CPPS may be life threatening, the system has to be tested adequately in advance by applying different software verification and validation methods. However, the operation of field tests for CCPS usually is an expensive, time and resource consuming task, and limited to only a small set of potential scenarios, mostly ignoring possibly hazardous situations. Therefore, within SCT US, the concept of a hybrid simulation testbed was developed, which combines the advantages of both virtual and real environment within the context of a distributed, embedded, real-time system, by placing an entire physical CPPS together with its virtual counterparts into the same simulation. Both physical and virtual components are interconnected via Industrial Ethernet. The CPPS is then verified under different environmental conditions that will be generated by a model-based testing framework.

Task:

• Export of relevant device/network setup data from the Siemens IDE via specific interface (TIA Openness) as input for the test generation framework
• Extension of the model-based testing framework via
  • A model generator to automatically generate an abstract model of the industrial automation system
  • A specific environment generator to automatically transform the abstract model to a simulator-specific model
  • A code generator to automatically translate abstract test cases into concrete test instructions
• Development of a feedback control application to receive diagnostics/monitoring data from the virtual test setup and the programmable logic controller (PLC)
• Extension of the model-based testing framework via a module to automatically adapt model and test cases at runtime based on given feedback data (context-sensitive reaction behavior)

Requirements:

• Strong development skills (proven through participation in medium to large scale industrial or research projects) in C/C++ and Java
• Basic knowledge of source code version control (git/svn)
• Experience in industrial automation systems and PLC programming languages (especially SIMATIC S7) is a plus
• Experience in the field of model-based testing is a plus
• Outstanding collaboration, interpersonal and communication (verbal & written) skills in English is a must

In case of interest please refer to Sebastian Eckl.